I get the anger over the result, but if it ever caused figure skating to get dropped from the Olys, I would hate that for the skaters who put their whole lives into the sport with the goal in mind. I would also hate it for myself and others who love to watch, even when the judging is a total shit show, as it very frequently is. People are held up and down every season in figure skating, it's just on a large stage this time.

Obviously it depends who you're rooting for, but there were at least 2 events this time around in skating that had really, really questionable judging. I don't understand how you have flawless programs and suddenly it's a 5 point discrepancy. This Russian came out of nowhere and her choreography was choppy as hell. I thought skating was supposed to be about the whole package - which Yuna and Carolina both had in spades. I call bullshit.

i just watched this. i think kostner deserved bronze, not gold or silver. she was good, great for her even, but she doesn't have the grace and weightlessness of some of the other girls, probably due to her height.
as for the yuna kim/sotnikova controversy... i'm kind of torn. on the one hand, yuna kim's performance was practically flawless and artistically better than sotnikova's. but sotnikova was pretty incredible technically and gave it everything whereas i felt yuna kim was holding back a little. at most, i think yuna kim was slightly more deserving of gold but not by as wide a margin as people are suggesting.

also, i thought wagner deserved to score higher than gracie gold. i'll admit, i can't stand gold. her costume was super pageanty and she just annoys me.

I just re-watched it - I still don't see how there was a 5 point difference, especially when the Russian did 2 foot something and her footwork came to a grinding halt. She beat Mao Asada in the freeskate, wtf? As for the other Russian, who I think is fantastic, she didn't skate fantastic and how she stayed in 5th is beyond me when she fell in both programs.

So I'm not sure if it's all over the place, but I just heard that one of the judges on the panel got in shit for trying to fix an event in Nagano and the other judge has close ties (apparently she might even be his wife) with the head of the Russian Figure Skating Federation. *face palm*

Who Were the Figure Skating Judges?

Rarely does a Winter Olympics pass without something happening that invites intense scrutiny of the figure skating judges. On Thursday night, the latest issue emerged — this time at the most high-profile moment, after the reigning gold medalist, Kim Yu-na of South Korea, performed the final free skate of the competition.

Kim was given a lower score (144.19) in the long program than Adelina Sotnikova (149.95) of Russia. Sotnikova finished with 224.59 overall points to Kim’s 219.11, a result that gave Sotnikova the gold medal and provoked international debate.

After a vote-trading scandal by judges discredited the pairs and ice-dancing competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, skating officials overhauled their scoring and judging systems, trying to make the sport more objective and less susceptible to corruption. But the sport’s credibility remains a source of great dispute.

Individual scores by judges are given anonymously. The votes by each judge are kept in a safe at the headquarters of the international skating federation in Lausanne, Switzerland, according to Sonia Bianchetti of Italy, who has judged at seven Olympics.

Anonymity was granted to judges in an effort to lessen pressure from their national skating federations. But this makes it extremely difficult to detect collusion and nationalistic bias, Bianchetti recently said.

Here is a rundown of the officials and judges involved with the women’s free program on Thursday night in Sochi:

■ Judge No. 1: Birgit Föll of Germany.

■ Judge No. 2: Yuri Balkov of Ukraine. At the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, Balkov was taped by the Canadian judge Jean Senft explaining what order the competitors would finish in the ice-dancing competition before it took place. He was suspended for one year. He returned to judging and is certified by the international federation.

■ Judge No. 3: Franco Benini of Italy.

■ Judge No. 4: Zanna Kulik of Estonia.

■ Judge No. 5: Nobuhiko Yoshioka of Japan.

■ Judge No. 6: Alla Shekhovtsova of Russia. She is the wife of Valentin Piseev, general director of the Russian figure skating federation.

■ Judge No. 7: Hélène Cucuphat of France.

■ Judge No. 8: Karen Howard of Canada.

■ Judge No. 9: Adriana Domanska of Slovakia.

■ Technical controller: Alexander Lakernik of Russia, who has been the vice president of the Russian figure skating federation. He was voted chairman of the international federation’s technical committee in the wake of the 2002 Salt Lake scandal.

■ Technical specialist: Vanessa Gusmeroli, a retired French figure skater and a world championships bronze medalist.

■ Assistant technical specialist: Olga Baranova of Finland.

■ Referee: Diana Barbacci Levy of Switzerland.

■ Data operator: David Santee of the United States.

■ Replay operator: Alexander Kuznetsov of Russia. In the aftermath of the judging scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake Games, Russian officials, including Kuznetsov, expressed frustration that the Canadians pushed to have the pair of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier elevated to a gold medal. “The Russians would never have brought up this issue,” said Kuznetsov, identified as a “figure skating coach.” “The Russians would have proven their right to victory at the next competition.”

Change.org, a website that hosts public petitions, crashed Friday morning after a flood of users signed a petition to investigate a controversial Olympic figure skating result.
Russia's Adelina Sotnikova won the gold medal in an upset over South Korea's Yuna Kim.

After the event, a Change.org petition called "Open Investigation into Judging Decisions of Women's Figure Skating and Demand Rejudgement at the Sochi Olympics" was started by a user named "Justice Seeker."

It went viral in a way the website had never seen before.

"The petition gained 700,000-plus signatures in just six hours and is sending traffic to our site at five times the highest previously-recorded rate," a spokesperson told the AFP.

The petition is up to 1.5 million signatures as of 6:30 a.m. eastern on Friday. The spokesperson told AFP that 90% of the traffic was from South Korea — where Kim is the country's most famous athlete.

Sotnikova had a more difficult routine and she nailed every jump, which gave her a better technical score than Kim by about five points.

Below is the full text of the petition.

It ends, "This is NOT for Yuna Kim, this is for the FAIR SPORTSMANSHIP THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE CENTRAL TO THE WORLD EVENT OF THE OLYMPICS."

The following public figures' twit will give you a good gist of what happened:

CBC Commentary: "That's a shock...Did you see that coming" (of Sotnikova winning) "Well I think I saw a medal coming, I'm just not sure we thought it was going to be that one" "As caught up in the moment as I was... I'm still stuck on quality of skating that Yuna Kim has, and the moments where you see jarring images during Sotnikova that she's not ready yet ...The judges have their job and I really look forward to looking at it again so I can see it with fresh eyes but yes I am sitting here a little stunned"

New York Times: "Comparing the Jumps of Sotnikova and Yu-na" included rating of Sotnikova's Triple Flip and Double axel as "Poor" in the free program and Yu-na's ratings consisted of Good only.
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As you can probably tell, the world was keeping an eye on Yuna Kim who has set a World Record for the history of Women's Figure Skating, to defend her gold medalist title this Sochi Olympic 2014. The free skating event took place this morning and nobody denies the fact the Sotnikova did present to her potential. She did an amazing job and showed amazing performance. The one mistake she made was the stumbling after one of her jumps which was - although small - quite visible even to the public who do not know professional knowledge of figure skating. Nevertheless, she achieved her best score of 149.95 which was 0.11 away from Yu-na Kim's world record of 150.06 at the Vancouver Olympics. This comparison illustrates the home advantage already although I do admit that rules have changed since then but we are talking of quality of programme here.

Next up was Yuna Kim, she skated and her performance can be shown through what the CBC commenters said "this woman has no equal". She did show tiny unstable landing in one of her jumps, but relative to the stumble shown by Sotnikova, it was not as visible and she carried on with superb acting performance. "If you were to write a textbook, that would be how to do it", "Nobody compares to the flow she takes as she jumps and on the landings, nobody" (CBC)

Even the night before in the short programme, an evaluation sheet from the judges were made public which showed 0 in one of Yuna's jumps - in the short program where she made no mistakes at all which already shocked the Korean people. As well as the fact that they put 4 Russian people as judges out of the 14, makes all the sense. But the score in the free program has added on to the unfairness of what's supposed to be the fairest of all competitions - the Olympics. The corruption needs to be made visible and needs to be corrected.

The above quotes are chosen because they are stated by well-known figures, however, the rest of the public is demanding justice. But of course, we, as just citizens, know that our voice is weak and we may not have a chance to change anything. But this is crucial. And this petition may help towards bringing fairness back into the Olympics that showed so much corruption ironically. Yuna does not care about the medal since Gold was not in her utmost desires but it is the unfairness being observed by EVERYONE in the world except Russia. They need to acknowledge that yes, Sotnikova wrote the history in Russia but HISTORY IS FULL OF BIAS THAT NEEDS TO BE CORRECTED. This is NOT for Yuna Kim, this is for the FAIR SPORTSMANSHIP THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE CENTRAL TO THE WORLD EVENT OF THE OLYMPICS.

At this point, I don't think anything can be done. If Yu-na hadn't omitted a jump, it would be a totally different story. In the Battle of the Brians, IIRC, Orser omitted a jump and it cost him, although he had better footwork and spins than Boitano. It was decided on the technical score. I don't think it's fair either (with all the crap going on in Russia right now, I'm a bit biased, sorry), but I don't think the IOC and ISU are going to give out a second gold.

Honestly, I'd have given it to Caro. She had the same amount of triples but was 2 points BEHIND Adelina in program components. Carolina should have been 2 or 3 points higher in components and Adelina about 5 points lower. Ugh, whatever. I'm over the outrage. It's like banging your head against a wall. I was pissed last year when Patrick won over Dennis, when he won in 2012 over Dai, and countless other times when there have been absurd results. It's exhausting working up the energy to be scandalized each time especially when nothing changes.

^^^
she's better. for sure. and her performance yesterday was definitely excellent and very artistic. but she just doesn't have the same level of confidence, mastery and grace on the ice that yuna kim and the russians have. or even the americans.

as for the yuna kim/sotnikova controversy, i think under a different scoring system kim would have won but under the current system, which is definitely problematic, technical difficulty is valued far above artistry and was it not the case, kim would have won gold. I think the problem isn't so much with the judges as with the scoring system and i think under the current system, sotnikova won fair and square but under a different system, it would have gone to kim. i don't think there was cheating although it's always been well known that figure skating judges aren't exactly the most objective bunch of people out there. this is not new.

I enjoyed Adelina, but I do think she was overscored and gifted the win. I agree that she skated a very powerful and captivating program. I just don't think she blew everyone else out of the water to the extent that her scores suggested.

I think I'm one of the few who didn't enjoy Carolina Kostner's program. I thought that the choreography was very disjointed and that she looked awkward on the ice.

Yulia Lipnitskaya is a beautiful skater, and I really enjoyed watching her. I also liked Gracie Gold. I hope to see them both compete in the Olympics again.

Can't stand Ashley Wagner. She is just so obnoxious, and nowhere near as good as she seems to think she is.